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Power begets corruption

By Al Osefrom Wisconsin Rapids on Jul 11, 2014 at 7:00 a.m.

It is time to close the Internal Revenue Services.

“A report from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration shows that between Oct. 1, 2010, and Dec. 31, 2012, the IRS paid $2.8 million in bonuses to employees cited in the past year for such things as drug use, making violent threats, fraudulently claiming unemployment benefits, misusing government credit cards and — get this — failing to pay their taxes,” according to the Washington Post.

The report said more than 1,100 employees who failed to pay their taxes received discretionary awards of more than $1 million in cash bonuses and more than 10,000 hours in extra paid vacation.”

The New Media Journal reported IRS employees spending all of their time on union business and wrote, “lawmakers said more than 40 of the workers doing union business make six-figure salaries, and all told there were more than 200 IRS employees serving in 100 percent “official time capacity” from Jan. 20 through June 6, 2012.”

The costs of an income tax are confiscatory. If a person were stupid, he would not understand these costs, but to be ignorant of them requires some effort. There are compliance costs, noncompliance costs, losses related to underground or shadow market economies, and hidden costs buried in the prices of goods and services.

John Adams said, “The moment the idea enters into society that property is not as sacred as God’s law, and that there is not the force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.” Your income is your very first property and you may not gain another without it. We must end the income tax.

After 13 months of investigating the IRS, the agency reports it lost two years of Lerner’s emails. If there is no smidgeon of corruption what is the Administration hiding?